Would you like to protect your child’s inheritance from passing to their spouse, from divorce, lawsuits, creditors, bankruptcy court, loss of government benefits, and even payment of future estate taxes?

Kiselstein Franckowiak Law Group can design your estate plan in such a way that it allows your children, following your death, to protect their inheritance from all of the above dangers. This type of asset protection planning is done by establishing a Personal Asset Trust℠ (PAT) inside of your revocable living trust. Think of it as a trust within your trust.

What most clients like about a establishing a Personal Asset Trust℠ is that it also allows you to control the distribution of the proceeds upon the deaths of your children so that your estate will then pass on to your grandchildren, rather than to in-laws or others.

A Personal Asset Trust℠ can also be used to maximize the benefit of an inheritance for a beneficiary that is unable to make responsible financial decisions. In these types of situations a trustee would be appointed to hold the assets in the PAT and distribute them to the beneficiary as needed.

The Personal Asset Trust℠ is drafted to be flexible and to adapt to a beneficiary’s changing life stages or personal situations. It can even adapt to changes in state or federal law. Without a PAT, your revocable trust will become irrevocable upon your death, often an undesirable result since an irrevocable trust cannot adapt or change.

The PAT includes extensive trust protector provisions, which allow the trust to adapt and provide the trustee (often times your child) with flexibility. An example of this flexibility is the ability for the PAT to be converted to a special needs trust that would allow a special needs loved one to be eligible for state and federal benefit programs while remaining the beneficiary of this trust. (See more about Special Needs Planning.) Another example is the ability to adapt from an Illinois trust to a trust of another state which your child may reside in, if that state has more favorable local tax laws.